Frank Gehry:
“Berta found the house. It was comfy and we could afford it.

I realized I had to do something to it before we moved in.

I loved the idea of leaving the house intact… I came up with the idea of building the new house around it. We were told there were ghosts in the house… I decided they were ghosts of Cubism. The windows… I wanted to make them look like they were crawling out of this thing. At night, because this glass is tipped it mirrors the light in… So when you’re sitting at this table you see all these cars going by, you see the moon in the wrong place… the moon is over there but it reflects here… and you think it’s up there and you don’t know where the hell you are…”

Mildred Friedman, Writer, Curator: “The idea was that they would find a little bungalow and it would give Frank a kind of laboratory to work in.”

Charles Jencks, Architect, Writer: “Let me tell you how he finished his house. One day he went up to shave in the bathroom, and there was no light to shave by. And so he picked up a hammer and knocked a hole in the ceiling, into the California sun, and then he shaved by it.”

American Masters Funding

American Masters is made possible by the support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for American Masters is provided by Rosalind P. Walter, Rhoda Herrick, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, Vital Projects Fund, Jack Rudin, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, and public television viewers.